take care, take care, take care
by aploun
Summary: it's my turn to save you


_**last known surroundings**_

The bitter cold wind tore at your face with a force you considered refreshing. Your pale cheeks were kissed raw and rosy by the youthful winter gusts.

The season of mufflers, dripping noses, and sad eyes had taken it's first breath upon the city.

The sidewalk beneath your feet was encrusted with a layer of ice. Not the beautifully fragile ice you see in movies, sparkling surfaces with a whisper as soft as a mother's lullaby when stepped upon.

This ice was dark and cracked from the hours it cycled from freezing and melting, collecting the grotesque tint of the grime laden streets it entombed beneath it.

_Your name is Homura Akemi, and the Earth has never seemed so perfectly tainted_.

You walk this same path day after day, an achingly sickening ritual.

The only change being the color of the leaves that currently lay shriveled and damp on the ground, slowly decaying back to nature.

You work the night shift for a local coffee shop that was just as tainted. The customers that visit being either secluded folks who try to warm their hearts with tea, only to feel emptier and leave with heavy eyes, or the occasional tourist who got lost and needed to use the restroom.

The only pleasure you allow yourself throughout the day is spending thirty solitary minutes sitting in Puella Park, a homely parkland with a pitifully small and rusting playground in the interior.

It's nothing remotely extravagant, but it's quiet, a safe haven away from the smell of coffee beans and obnoxiously repetitive coffee shop music.

You invite yourself in like an old friend, crunching over the ice packed leaves that littered all around you, withered and dwindled like fallen soldiers.

You sit on your usual bench, the chilled metal earning you goose-bumps despite your warm clothing that wraps around you from head to toe.

The silence wraps around you too, tighter than the cloth, it constricts to your thin, thin, bones. The feeling it familiar, the silence is welcomed.

The unspoken serenity of the moment is suddenly shattered.

The trance you were in fades in time to spot a petite white shape flash past your feet, followed by a gasp and rushed footsteps across the cobblestone pavement.

The white object materializes next to you on the bench, piercing you with haunting pink eyes. You shake the menacing cat's gaze to look up a softer, friendlier pink.

There's a girl with supple pink hair tied up in delicate pigtails and is panting slightly from her jog across the park.

She widens her much less frighteningly pink eyes, she smiles with the sincerity of the most loved and cherished of goddesses that spread their hope and love to all they meet.

_And for once, you wish your world wouldn't be so silent._

Your breaths came as short, labored wheezes, you weren't necessarily friendly with the fact that you had just sprinted at full speed down ten blocks in pajamas barefoot all due to your cat Kyuubey getting loose, again.

_Your name is Madoka Kaname and your beginning to question why you don't just allow Kyuubey to be an outside cat._

Then your eyes meet dead-on contact with a girl sitting on the bench right beside your devious feline.

Her eyes look cold, almost corpse like, you feel oddly drawn to them in a way. She seems cold, not body-heat wise considering her layers of winter clothing.

_But on the inside, her eyes spoke it all, those dead, pale eyes._

You open your mouth to say something.

Anything.

Words were a void concept to you in that moment.

So you smile.

You bring one hand up to your left pigtail and twist the pale hair around your fingers, in a nervous fashion.

There was a tension filling the air, not an awkward silence, nor an anger, simply a tension unbroken by words or action.

It's the girl who breaks it,"Is this your cat?"

She asks calmly, shifting her eyes towards the small white puff that was now laying on her lap.

"Ah, yeah! His name is Kyuubey, sorry about the trouble… He is always running away from home and I try to keep him inside but he nev-"

You cut off when you notice the girl staring at you with subtly quirked eyebrow, the first expression she makes to you.

You laugh nervously, rambling was a bad habit of yours that is constantly pointed out by your friends, to your disdain.

"Have you ever considered maybe her doesn't want to live with you?" The girl states simply, this would be taken offensively by most people.

Something in the way the pale eyed girl says things makes everything seem, curious, rather than angry.

"No, I guess not" You say soft as silk.

You always assumed because you were happy with him, he was happy with you. The thought makes your mouth form a pout.

"Well, er, my name is Madoka!" You say with a childish enthusiasm and hold out your equally as childish hand.

The girl meets your eyes again slowly,"Homura" she whispers flatly.

"…My name is Homura" her spindly hand reaches to grasp your cold, slightly shaking fingers.

"_Homura_" you repeat slowly, it feels familiar yet so, so new.

_For the first time since you've met the perplexing, dead-eyed girl, you see her lips curl ever so slightly._


End file.
